Book Your Domains Using Bitcoin – Registrars that accept Bitcoins

Bitcoins popularity is steadily raising and most of the merchants now takes payments through bitcoins. Crypto enthusiasts across the world looking for vendors that accepts bitcoin as a payment method especially domain name registrars. Below are some of the domain name registrars that accepts bitcoins as payments to register domains. Please note that I am just listing out all the domain service providers that accepts bitcoin but haven’t verified them personally to recommend the best ones.

You may consider below points before Domain Registrations –

How to Choose a Domain Registrar –

Check whether the Domain Service Registrar is doing business at least for few years online

Check whether the Service Provider has an SSL in their domain (means website should support https://)

See whether the provider is listed in Better Bureau Business (BBB) and has a good rating (o)r any other third party places where the registrar services listed are verified and genuine

Check whether the provider using any of the Antivirus scanner (ex: McAfee Certified etc) for his website.

Choose a Good Domain Name for Branding & SEO

Select the right extension to reach the target audience

Possibility of having Brand name or industry keyword in the domain for SEO purpose

What is X11 algorithm and How to Mine X11 Coins

X11 algorithm was developed by Dash (formerly Darkcoin) developers and its called a Proof-of-Work (POW). The algo was based on multiple rounds of different hashes (blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, echo) by making it one of the safest crypto currency in existence.

List of X11 Supported Coins –

Dash (Darkcoin)

StartCoin

CannabisCoin

SmartCoin

ConspiracyCoin

Europecoin

GiveCoin

HashCoin

LimeXcoin

Logicoin

Muniti

Nyancoin

Quebecoin

XCurrency

How to Mine X11 using CPU/GPU/ASIC Mining

When Darkcoin aka Dash was initially launched with X11 algo, it was only mineable through CPU mining softwares. Slowly the network hashrate has gone upwards and it was widely speculated that someone would have created GPU Miner and to be fair for the individual miners a bounty was announced to create GPU miner that could be available for public. Though GPU has dominated X11 mining, if you have good enough RAM, you can try your hand at mining X11 coins.

The advantages of X11 mining are security, speed in generating hashes for both CPU and GPU at the same time keeping the GPU’s 30% cooler for better longetivity of your graphic cards without getting them overheated. Also, due to it’s power efficiency reduces your monthly electricity bills to an extent. Comparatively bit more complicated than bitcoins SHA256 algo, makes prevents ASIC mining in near future making it possible to mine with CPU/GPU effectively.

X11 CPU/GPU Mining Software

CPU Miner for X11 and other algorigthms – https://github.com/tpruvot/cpuminer-multi/releases

Evan Duffield, the creator of Darkcoin and X11 chained-hash, has wrote on several occasions that X11 was integrated into Darkcoin not with the intention to prevent ASIC manufacturers from creating ASICs for X11 in the future, but rather to provide a similar migratory path that Bitcoin had (CPUs, GPUs, ASICs).

Litecoin Mining Hardware Comparison

As you can see, crypto currency values fluctuate with the course of time. Somewhere in the past, Bitcoin was the most valuable currency in the space but then in terms of market capitalization, Litecoin surpassed Bitcoin. This made an enormous amount of miners to shift focus on the Litecoin as the returns were more valuable than the latter. Higher returns also inspired many new comers to start mining Litecoins but newbies fail to understand the importance and get stuck in the first step i.e. selecting the right hardware for mining Litecoins.

Hardware Is the Most Significant Part of This Venture

When an inexperienced individual is willing to mine Litecoins; the primary and foremost aspect to consider is the selection of hardware which is able to provide sufficient energy in order to get fast returns. Have you been thinking to mine Litecoin but not sure what hardware is suitable for this kind of cryptocurrency? No problem, the purpose of this article is to compare Litecoin mining hardware while assuming that you understand the technicalities of this business, specifically Litecoins and their mining processes.

In regard to mining Litecoins, the most important hardware include; graphical processing unit (GPU) and the power supply. Other hardware such as motherboard, hard drive, ram and central processing unit are also important but the primary driving forces are your GPU and power supply. We will compare several brands and configuration directly relating them to the purpose of mining hardware along with their costs.

GPU’s (Graphical Processing Unit)

The GPUs are most important because more than half of the mining work is done by them. In order to set up a rig that can afford the mining work, you will need at least three good graphic cards in your system. There are several graphic cards available for this purpose. If you are on a tight budget, you can buy any of these used 7950-based graphic cards from Amazon and they will work fine to fulfill the purpose. However, if you are quality-oriented, this MSI GTX 950 is great as many expert miners mostly recommend MSI cards but some say these Sapphire cards also provide great performance and reduced electricity consumption as they are not voltage-locked. Also, this Sapphire Radeon 7950 and this one are voted as good choices. If you cannot find the 7950 cards as they are hard to find, this Radeon R9 280x is great for mining Litecoins. In comparison to the 7950 cards that provide up to 700 Kh/s and consume less power, the R9 280x cards can provide 750 Kh/s (four of these cards will provide total rig power of 3,000 Kh/s) but will consume a lot of power so you may also need to get a high grade power supply. If you are not able to find the 280x as well, then get this R9 290 card as it is also recommended by some powerful miners who have seen amazing results.

Power Supply (PSU)

True to its name, the power supply supplies power to your system and without this component no any computer is complete. Their importance is already understood as power requirements, especially for mining purpose, are huge because you have to power at least two to four graphic cards, so you need to get a justly powerful PSU. The EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 watt and the Rosewill ATX 1300 watt works perfectly to power your GPUs and will provide sufficient power. However, these two are not easily available and a good alternative is to simply get two of the Corsair RM Series 750 watt and connect them with any of these multiple power supply adapters.

The Right Motherboard, Ram and CPU

The motherboard, ram and CPU does not directly affect the overall performance of your mining rig. Even the simplest of these hardware will enable you to mine Litecoins efficiently. But to cater your graphic cards, the motherboard must have three to four PCI-E slots. The ASRock and Gigabyte motherboards are best choices. The ASRock MB-970EX4 and ASRock 970 EXTREME3 motherboards are great and if these are not available, go for this Gigabyte motherboard. Get this AMD Sempron CPU and this Corsair 4 GB ram, please note that comparing CPU and ram is somewhat unimportant as both of these components will not affect the mining efficiency of your system. Simply choose economically according to your budget.

PCI-E risers aren’t really important but getting them gives you advantage of unlimited airflow and maintained temperature as well. A miner reportedly said that utilization of risers reduced the temperature of his GPUs by 10 degrees. Get these risers if you are willing to buy them. Finally, it depends upon you that how you want to assemble all the above mentioned hardware in a single box or room. The case can be made in different forms as some people just leave the system open in order to increase airflow. Some cases are made by utilizing these storage crates, which can be seen in the above image.

One of the top Cloud mining Services, Genesis is expanding its base on cloud mining operations with the introduction of new mining contracts on X11 and Ether. It’s the first time that Genesis is offering these two services to their cloud mining customers apart from Bitcoin Mining.

“Our customers asked and we listened. Due to our large-scale GPU mining activities we are glad to offer significant parts of our farms for Ether mining in the cloud. Users can therefore benefit from our economy of scale and our geothermal-powered and optimized GPU mining rigs in Iceland. We are bullish on Ethereum and look forward to giving our customers the chance to profit from this exciting innovation and also support the network,” Marco Streng, CEO of Genesis Mining, said in a statement.”

Ethereum was developed in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin and it became successful coin with more than $15 million in value. Microsoft too has acknowledged the potential of Ethereum by offering blockchain as a service on their Azure platform. This will certainly boost developers on ethereum to come up with more innovations on the blockchain technology and for adapters a chance to use rapid technology on blockchain ecosystem.

How to Mine Ethereum – Mining Ethereum requires GPU hardware and software to do the computational calculations. For those who can’t do mining on their own or those who prefers cloud mining, Genesis is a certain option as it has proven to be one of the reliable vendor providing cloud mining services.

How to Start Cloud Mining

First, you need to join a cloud mining company simply by buying shares available online. Next, You need to select an plan(hashing power), pay for it and you may start mining immediately after purchase. By signing Ethereum mining contract your provider will take care of most mining maintenance, jobs and keep everything up while you just sit back and receive you share of coins that are mined every day which gets deposited into your ethereum wallet. So, With cloud mining services, there’s no need to have your own mining computer, no dependency on high electricity bills, no coping with software and setup problems and no mining knowledge is required. Purchasing a cloud mining hash power takes care of all this for you.

You will receive daily or weekly payouts for your Ethereum wallet address (it depends on the plan, but normally payouts happens daily). You have to pay in advance for hashing power and contracts normally goes for a period of 1 year or lifetime (lifetime contract plans valid till mining with the rented hardware is profitable).

What Packages does Genesis offers in Etherem Cloud Mining Contract –

Small Package – For those who prefers small scale mining at 3 MH/s which costs 53.97$ for 1 year contract

Medium Package – It includes 50 MH/s at 899.5$ for 1 Year contract

Large Package – For Big scale Mining at 100 MH/s at a price of 1799$ for 1 Year Contract.

The new one year contract offer from Genesis Mining will switch from Ether mining to X11 mining if Ethereum switches from proof-of-work(POW) to proof-of-stake(POS) which supposedly will happen by end of 2016

ZCash – A Truly Anonymous and Privacy Oriented Coin

What is Zcash?

ZCash is a highly anonymous crypto currency which is highly privacy centric with zero knowledge proofs, making transactions completely private and encrypted. So, though Zcash trades are available on the blockchain, the sender, receiver and value of payments becomes private. This is an addition to Bitcoin Privacy.

Which algorithm does ZCash Uses?

Zcash uses the Equihash hash algo which is a memory-hard POW algorithm that uses generalized birthday problem. It uses high RAM requirements to deny ASIC developments to develope the generation of proofs.

So how does it exactly operates?

Since the contents of Zcash trades are private and encrypted, the system works on the new cryptographic technique to check payments. This enables the network to keep a risk-free ledger of balances without revealing sums or the parties called for.

Technology

Zcash is a de-centralized and open source cryptocurrency that offers particular and seclusion transparency of trades. The sender, receiver, and quantity of a trade stay private, although zcash payments are printed on a publicly viewable blockchain.

It’s main progress over Bitcoin is the inclusion of secrecy. Zcash uses sophisticated cryptographic techniques, specifically zero-knowledge proofs, to vouch for the validity of trades without disclosing additional info about them.

ZCash Coin Launch Date

ZCash will be available for mining on 28th October, 2016 and currently available on the “testnet” for those who wants to get a feel of how the mining works.

Is It available on All Platforms (Windows, Linux etc)

The official launch supports only Linux and once the first version gets available to the public, you may expect the Windows version to hit the market

How to Mine ZCash?

Steps to Mine Zcash On Linux Systems –

First step is to install all the required package dependencies. Use the respective package manager available on your linux flavors (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora etc)

Build all the essential utilized as mentioned at https://github.com/zcash/zcash/wiki/Beta-Guide

Once all the dependencies gets installed, the next step is to download and install Zcash

Upon successful downloading the repository contents, get into that folder and enter the command

git checkout v1.0.0-rc1 (you can download the whatever latest revision available on the github and use here)

and then enter the command ./zcutil/fetch-params.sh

The above takes time a lot of time as keys size is GB’s

Second Step – Compiling ZCash

To compile ZCash execute the following – ./zcutil/build.sh -j$(nproc)

Final step is to run Zcash by doing the following steps –

Go to Files -> Create “.Zcash” Folder -> Create a file zcash.conf and enter the following details and save the conf file

zcash.Conf

———–

testnet=1

addnode=betatestnet.z.cash

rpcuser=username

rpcpassword=password

gen=1

and thats all, now go back to the terminal and enter the following command, ./src/zcashd -daemon and Zcash daemon will start and to stop the daemon, run the command ./src/zcash-cli stop.

So, with the above your ZCash mining starts and you will start seeing the testnet coins with all the hashrate being displayed at the screen.

How to Mine Zcash using Cloud Mining?

Genesis Mining offers Zcash cloud mining mining contracts so if you are interested in doing cloud mining of ZCash by 29th October which is the launch date, you can purchase contract and get ready for mining without any hassles.